


buried feelings that devour you whole

by yxrtyu



Series: denial is a river [7]
Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Marijuana, Non-Linear Narrative, Sexual Content, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:00:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28616973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yxrtyu/pseuds/yxrtyu
Summary: They both get high on the roof outside EJ’s bedroom. Up here underneath smoke and stars, time stands still. Ricky looks over to a boy he is drawn to. Moth to flame. A dangerous combination.“Think you could ever fall in love?”Ricky hears the question and only stares at EJ.Ricky and EJ in the summer. And then just Ricky.
Relationships: Ricky Bowen/E.J. Caswell
Series: denial is a river [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1596217
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	buried feelings that devour you whole

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. I had SO many ideas for this. I wanted to write cute moments in between the two of them, like Ricky studying for finals and EJ helping him out, and the two of them having deep talks about family and futures, and everyone on a road trip together. I wanted to pull out all the Young Adult cliches and just throw them all in here.
> 
> But I didn't because I hated whatever I wrote even though some of it is pretty cute.
> 
> I also wanted to try something new. I've never really done nonlinear storytelling, and I thought it would fit best here. I also wanted to be more... flowery with my words, I guess. Less dialogue heavy, more expressive. 
> 
> I will appreciate ANY critiques, especially on kids with divorced parents and if anything I wrote didn't make any sense as this is non beta'd. (All my stuff is non beta'd, unfortunately LOL.)
> 
> Also, can you believe it’s been a year since this series started? Thank you to everyone that reads my stories and enjoys them and continues to support me. It really means a lot. I probably would not have kept writing for this fandom or others if you guys didn’t ask for more. 
> 
> So. Yeah. Hope you enjoy.

_Nature’s first green is gold,  
_ _Her hardest hue to hold.  
_ _Her early leaf’s a flower;  
_ _But only so an hour.  
_ _Then leaf subsides to leaf.  
_ _So Eden sank to grief,  
_ _So dawn goes down to day.  
_ _Nothing gold can stay._

\- Robert Frost

* * *

There is something bittersweet about a late August night, with the crickets chirping their songs and the heat suppressed by the cool blanket of darkness. Ricky can taste it, a sort of yearning that fills him to the brim, cup on the verge of overflowing. It is that time of the year when the air is charged with static restlessness and skims over his skin like an itch he can’t scratch. Summer is coming to a close, and Ricky can feel it. 

Here, in the dark, Ricky stands in front of EJ, ready to spill.

There’s one, two, three steps between him and EJ. Just three steps, and he could find himself lost with no path to take him back where he needs to be. EJ looks at him, looks into him, and Ricky wonders if he sees everything that he does not want to say. 

Running a tongue over chapped lips, he inhales summer air, then opens his mouth to speak. 

“Let’s end things.”

* * *

Change occurs at every second at every minute at every hour every day every year. It is how life keeps moving on, unable to stop for those that cannot. Change is growing, change is dying. Ricky is not the same person he was mere seconds ago, dead skin cells sloughing off of him to create an entirely different person physically. He is not the same person a year ago when he thought less of theatre kids, when all he did was skateboard and play video games, and he only had room for his dad, his mom, Big Red, and Nini. He is not the same person before his family was ripped apart by his mother, whom he is not sure how to feel about anymore. 

Ricky is not the same person before EJ.

There exists a Before EJ, but also The Time With EJ, and After EJ. The last one, Ricky decides, will happen eventually whether he likes it or not. The last one Ricky refuses to accept but he has to because EJ is more than Salt Lake City, Utah. He is big dreams and brains and inexplicable beauty and can achieve much more than Ricky ever could.

He just can’t bear to bring himself to think about it, to really sit down and think about it and be surrounded by it. However, it looms far in the distance, coming closer as the year moves along at both a glacial pace and an alarming speed, like watching the outside world fly past you from behind a car window on a long drive.

His loud, incoherent thoughts are interrupted as he feels a pair of lips brush the back of his neck and an arm tighten around his waist. 

Before EJ, he would not be here, skin to skin and legs tangled in a mess with someone he used to despise with every fiber of his being.

But this is The Time With EJ, so he sighs softly and lets his eyes fall shut, hoping to push down overbearing thoughts of what if’s and maybes, daunting futures and empty promises.

He dreams of After EJ, but when he wakes up, he forgets all about it. 

(Something gnaws at the front of his brain and eats up a corner of his heart.)

* * *

Sticky, cold fingers touch Ricky’s face, and he looks to the owner and scowls.

“Just because you’re a customer does not mean you can harass me.” Ricky glares at EJ, whose lips twitch into a full blown smirk. “Don’t you have better things to do? Like, I don’t know, your own job?”

EJ, who is tall, handsome, tanned, and molded perfectly with God’s hands, shrugs his broad shoulders as he leans across the cool glass display where underneath it lay an assortment of ice creams and gelatos. He brings his hand to his own face and proceeds to lick his finger lewdly, tongue drawing a long stripe from knuckle to tip, eyes never leaving Ricky’s, before he sucks on it. It comes out with a pop. Ricky’s scowl deepens. 

“I have some time before my shift starts,” EJ casually explains. He places a cheek in his clean palm. “In the meantime, let me sample every single flavor.”

“You literally just had a scoop of ice cream that melted all over your gross fingers.” Ricky fixes his uniform issued hat that just can’t seem to stay on due to his messy bed head. He huffs out a sigh that blows a curl away from his face. “So no.”

“Ricky!” Carlos yells out from the back, where he holed himself up to do “managerial duties” or whatever. “Do I hear you denying a _customer_?!”

EJ reaches over the counter with his offending hand. Ricky promptly swats it away.

“What’s it going to be, Bowen?” EJ’s voice is dangerously low, and if it were not for the air conditioning that chilled the place and made it feel like Antarctica, Ricky would probably die from overheating.

“Please stop talking,” Ricky grumbles miserably as he gives into the request.

He grabs a small disposable spoon, reaches all the way down to give EJ raspberry sherbet, and then hands it to him, but instead of taking the spoon, like any normal person would, EJ wraps tan, slender fingers around his wrist and brings it to his mouth. Pink lips become colored with an even darker pink raspberry color that smears across the top lip. With a quick swipe of his tongue, EJ laps up the sherbet off the spoon before those lips reveal teeth that Ricky feels on his shoulder and the inside of his thigh. 

(There’s a glimpse into the future, more of an unwelcome thought and less of a vision, where sticky fingers used to touch now no longer exist, residue long since washed away. It leaves Ricky feeling… something. Heavy once again. Heavier maybe.)

“Ricky?”

He looks at EJ, who frowns at him. Gone is the pretense, and in its place is deep concern.

“You alright?” 

Ricky breathes slowly through his nose and out his mouth, ignoring the tightness in his chest. He tosses the spoon into the tiny garbage can on the counter and grabs another to get a sample of the mango passion fruit sherbet. He hands the spoon to EJ, whose expression does not ease up. It’s silent between the two of them, save for the three preteens in the corner giggling over something, the mechanical whirrings and hums of the air conditioner and freezers, and whatever pop song is playing on Carlos’s phone. 

Here, in a freezing ice cream shop in this quiet moment, EJ reaches over and brushes the curls out of his eyes. With bated breath, Ricky looks at blue eyes that plague his thoughts every waking second, and it is now that Ricky understands that EJ has two sides: wild, like a storm, and soft, like golden hour.

“Yeah,” Ricky finally says when he remembers to breathe.

He wants the golden hour to last forever, but the world is golden two hours of the day, and EJ will be gone in two months.

(“Nothing gold lasts forever,” his father told him one day after his mom went on a business trip. It was seemingly out of nowhere, and Ricky had no idea what it meant for he was too preoccupied with whatever he was preoccupied with at the age of 14.

A couple years passed, and Ricky looked around the house, suddenly seeming so dull and lifeless, and realized he hated being there. So he left.)

* * *

In a burst of rainbows and glitter and confetti on a terribly hot Salt Lake City summer day, the Pride parade rages on, stirring up love and positivity in the air that makes even Ricky believe everything will be alright.

Maybe it’s the atmosphere filled with energy emitted from the people of Salt Lake City and others that has Ricky letting loose, like a curled ball of string that becomes detangled. Sweat mats his hair and drips down his neck, drenching the back of his shirt, and the people crowding around him do nothing but raise the temperature to more than what it really is. Despite all the discomfort and heat, there’s a hand that holds his, a warm steady presence that guides him through the crowd.

If he squeezes the hand, he gets a squeeze back. If he squeezes twice, he gets two squeezes. If he pulls on it, he collides with a sweaty body before being captivated by blue eyes surrounded by tan skin that remind him of childhood summer vacations at Lake Powell, with its crystal blue waters that reflect the clear sky and enclosed by red sand that stretches for miles. 

(He doesn’t know why he particularly thinks of those carefree days when his parents were smiles and laughter with him and with each other, but the skies were bright and the water was refreshing and the red sands were scorching hot to the touch, just like how EJ’s skin burns under his hands.)

Ricky is not sure, but he definitely blames it on the atmosphere as he leans in and traps whatever question that is about to spill from EJ’s mouth and has it dissolve into a contented sigh. A thumb traces his cheekbone. A carving of initials on his heart’s bark. 

The surrounding crowd is deafening, coos and cheers thrown at them from all directions. When they pull apart, Ricky can see long lashes flutter open to reveal the blue of Lake Powell whose depths show something tender and something wild, and he finds himself wanting to dive in.

A secret that’s no longer secret, and Ricky laughs and laughs and lets his heart fill up from everyone and everything and EJ, and EJ, EJ, EJEJEJ.

The setting sun shines upon EJ, his brown hair and tanned skin glowing radiantly as he smiles and pulls Ricky along and into his arms where everything is alright and nothing matters. 

* * *

“What do you think about love?”

EJ passes him the blunt and blows out as he looks at him expectantly.

“I don’t know. I was pretty shit at it,” Ricky easily says before taking a drag. 

The statement makes EJ laugh that doesn’t really seem to stop. The kind of laugh that fills Ricky with a certain kind of happiness that he can’t find anywhere else. “So was I.”

They both get high on the roof outside EJ’s bedroom. Up here underneath smoke and stars, time stands still. Ricky looks over to a boy he is drawn to. Moth to flame. A dangerous combination.

“Think you could ever fall in love?”

Ricky hears the question and only stares at EJ.

* * *

The Time With EJ never seems to get worse. Only gets better, and Ricky thinks this will be the best summer of his life. 

The community pool is packed during the summer months with residents looking for a cool escape from the sweltering heat. Ricky, Big Red, Nini, and Kourtney have been to this pool ever since they were younger when they were naive and nothing ever hurt them, chasing each other around the pool with super soakers or competing against each other to see who had the biggest cannonball. It feels different and lost a little of its allure now that they’re older like all things do, but there exists a sense of nostalgia that never really goes away. 

Nowadays, Ricky visits the pool for one reason. That reason being a piece of eye candy in bright red lifeguard swim shorts with a tank to show off deliciously sculpted arms. 

Night has fallen, and all the patrons have finally gone home for the day. The sun had also taken its leave, the few streaks of burnt orange melding into night sky blues to create a horizon of dark purple was the only sign it was ever around. The only source of light comes from the pool lights, the reflections of the ripples of water dancing across EJ’s skin. 

Ricky watches EJ clean the pool, takes in the way his triceps and biceps move with each stroke of the net that catches the leaves and bugs that have fallen into the pool. EJ looks up and narrows his eyes at him. 

“You know, this could go faster if you’d help me,” he calls out to him in a half-teasing, half-scolding voice as he returns his focus to his task. 

It’s a good point, and Ricky’s hands are itching to feel skin that burns and firm muscles that can hold him down, but the end of June means July is here, and then follows August.

Ricky watches EJ, and instead of helping, he tries to burn the image of EJ, beautiful above the water that he loves so much, into his mind. A keepsake to carry with him.

(“Nothing gold lasts forever.”)

EJ is not gold, Ricky determines stubbornly.

EJ is not gold, his mind repeats as he shoves him up against the lockers of the lifeguard’s changing room. 

EJ is not gold, he tries to remember when his legs wrap around the waist of a boy he used to hate, the name of said boy on his lips when his eyes roll to the back of his head.

EJ is...

When he comes down from his high, Ricky looks into EJ’s eyes and sees what Ricky realized not too long ago, sees how absolutely deep EJ is in this thing they’re both in, a ship sinking to depth unimaginable.

EJ is not gold, and Ricky doesn’t say anything, just kisses him and holds desperately onto him. A foolish boy with another foolish boy. 

* * *

There are, however, two parts to The Time With EJ. There is Pre-Independence Day and Post-Independence Day. 

Post-Independence Day are days when Ricky is living his day to day life with an ever growing fear that hovers over his shoulder and reminds him of what is yet to come. It’s hard for him to live in the moment because he already misses EJ and already feels an overwhelming sense of guilt even though EJ is still in Salt Lake City and Ricky has not done anything yet.

They’re lying on top of thin towels in the back of EJ’s jeep with the backseats down. Damp skin sticks to each other and soaks through the towels, leaving dark blots in the shape of their bodies on the upholstery. Ricky is exhausted, from skinnydipping and sex and the thoughts of his mom returning back home with Todd. Thinking about it stresses him out, so he burrows his face in the crook of EJ’s neck, salt touching his lips and tasting so sweet. 

He faintly hears EJ ask if everything’s okay, but Ricky is too tired to answer. 

He listens to the night creatures sing a melody to the steady _ba-dump_ , _ba-dump_ of EJ’s heart. It calms him, washes away the worries of family problems at home and the creeping worry of future careers and colleges and EJ—

He squeezes EJ tighter.

“You know, this is the longest I’ve ever been with someone,” EJ says out loud. A hand goes through Ricky’s curls, neatly trimmed nails scratching his scalp that feels so good, it has Ricky almost fall asleep.

“Oh, yeah?” Ricky manages to get out as he relaxes into the hand. 

EJ’s heart beats faster. “... yeah.”

In his voice, softened to a whisper, Ricky hears feelings that wrap around him like a blanket, safe and secure and snug and _suffocating_.

(Ricky’s own feelings trapped in the back of his throat that’s raw from crying out EJ’s name into the night, held back by the fear of being alone once more.)

It’s already August, and he feels so undeserving of everything that EJ has given him for he hears those words his father spoke to him. It does not bear repeating. 

If Ricky is anything, he can be stubborn, so he rolls on top of EJ and tries to make the night last longer, to push back on going back to a broken home that fixed itself not quite properly, to keep EJ here in the back of his jeep with him and make this moment stretch into eternity. 

Though no matter how hard he tries, he has to go home, has to talk to his mom, has to leave EJ and this moment in the back of EJ’s jeep. 

Time stops for no one.

* * *

Ricky throws up red, white, and blue. 

“Man, you drank way too much,” Big Red half-heartedly teases as he rubs his back. “I see you had some of the July 4th juice, which, I have to say, looks way worse when it’s not barf.”

“What’s happening in here, party people?!” Gina yells out with the vigor of a frat boy when she bursts into the bathroom uninvited before she makes a disgusted noise. “Okay. I did not know this was happening. My bad.”

“Can you get the kid some water, please, Gina?” Big Red asks. 

From the corner of his eye, Ricky sees Gina straighten up to salute Big Red. “Aye aye, Capitán Grande Rojo.”

“Nini. I want Nini,” Ricky gasps out as soon as Gina leaves. He begins to dry heave. 

“Uh…” Big Red pauses his hand. “You don’t mean EJ?” 

Ricky shakes his head that’s flopped onto his arm. “No, Nini.” His stomach is protesting, his breaths are shallow, head too heavy to hold up, but he pushes himself to get one more word out. “Please.”

Ricky doesn’t hear an affirmation. Only knows that Big Red has left when there’s no hand on his back. 

He must have passed out because he wakes up with his head in Nini’s lap, her too small hand carding through his hair. A pounding headache plagues him, but his stomach is somewhat settled, especially if he curls his body around Nini’s, face in her stomach and arms wrapped around her waist. 

“I feel like shit,” Ricky groans out, voice muffled by Nini’s summer dress.

“Yeah, well, you look like shit.” She taps a finger to his cheek, prompting him to look up at her with one eye. “Everything okay, Ricky?”

Flashes of the night blur in his head, and he tries to make sense of it all. “No. I don’t know. Did I do anything stupid?”

Nini makes an uncertain noise that does nothing to placate Ricky. He sighs into her stomach. 

“What’d I do?”

“I don’t know. That’s the thing. You just started drinking a lot out of nowhere. Even to the point where you took our cups from our hands and drank from them.” A hand is placed on his cheek, which he grabs a hold of and keeps it there, a warm, soothing presence to keep him grounded. “Did something happen at home?”

The memories of tonight are still jumbled, playing like a film reel on a projector. He searches and searches, goes through the negatives and holds them to the light, a madman seeking the truth. 

With furrowed eyebrows, he licks his lips and thinks. “I… don’t know. I—“

Then he remembers. 

Across the living room, there is EJ with his water polo team laughing with each other. Ricky watches him, a simple boy admiring from afar, until EJ makes eye contact with him, and it’s such a tiny change, but Ricky knows EJ, has known him for over a year, and he just _knows_. 

EJ looks at Ricky with eyes that no longer hunger and a lightning strike that pierces through his skin right to his bone and to the tree that is Ricky’s heart where initials are carved and begins a forest fire that swallows Ricky whole.

“Ricky? Talk to me. You’re crying,” Nini says worriedly as she brushes the tears that drip down from the corner of his eyes down to his ears. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he half whispers, half sobs. He looks up at Nini, a girl he loved that loved him more, and he doesn’t know what’s worse. Being with Nini or being with EJ. “I’m scared.”

“What are you scared of, Ricky?”

His mom is about to come home for a week, his dad has turned back into a sullen shell, he doesn’t know what to make of himself, summer is about to end, and with it, something else that is good and beautiful will, too. 

All of these things he does not want to happen. 

“Everything.”

* * *

EJ, who used to be so closed off, becomes an open book as the year passes by. In the dark, street lamps shedding their light on the two of them, Ricky can see just how much he is hurting him, which in turn hurts Ricky, too. What cuts into Ricky even worse is when EJ closes that book, a look of cool stoicism on his face. 

“You want to end things,” EJ repeats, voice neither angry nor upset. Just… indifferent. 

Once you say things, you can’t just take them back. They’re already out there, flying far away from you and into people’s hearts to strike at them. There’s a shift between the two of them, something that Ricky expected to happen, and he knows there’s nowhere left to go but forward.

“Yeah.”

EJ makes a noncommittal huff and moves from his position against Ricky’s Volkswagen. The body talks, just as much as silence does, and Ricky feels the walls that he so carefully, tenderly broke down, start to build back up when EJ folds his arms across his chest. 

“Just like that.” Vitriol drips from his voice, and Ricky knows he deserves it. “A whole year. Gone.”

Ricky looks away from the swirling of winds that forms on top of Lake Powell.

“Can you at least tell me why?”

He doesn’t look up to see storm clouds gathering and lightning striking. He was struck once, and he doesn’t know if he could handle being struck again. 

EJ scoffs and throws a hand out as if waving a whole year of heated moments in secret spaces and pent up feelings gone. “Whatever. If this is what you want.”

Ricky’s mouth works before his brain. “It’s not.”

“Then fucking why, Ricky?!” EJ yells at him as he closes in on him, the sound of his thunderous voice making Ricky jump. With EJ this close to him, a breath away from lips he knows all too well, Ricky has no choice but to look in his eyes where all he sees is red rage and white pain. “Tell me why.”

_Because you are worth more than me and Salt Lake City and Utah and this world combined._

_Because I’m in love with you, but I am nothing, and I will only hold you back._

_Because I love you, but you are leaving me behind, you will pass through and leave me battered and broken._

“Because you’re leaving,” Ricky chooses to say instead. “And I don’t want to hold you back.”

EJ’s eyes turn to slits, furious skepticism on display. “Bullshit. Tell me the fucking truth.”

“It is the truth,” Ricky says through gritted teeth. He shuts his eyes tightly and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and tries to breathe. “You are leaving. You will meet others who are so much better than I am. Me? I’m nothing. No one to be tied down to.”

“What gives you the right to say that? What makes you think you can choose for me?!” 

Ricky tears his hands away from his eyes to finally meet the storm face to face. He’s scared shitless, and he’s been sinking for the past three months, but it’s either he continues to sink or he swims. “And what makes you think you can choose for me?!” 

“Don’t fucking throw my question back at my face,” EJ spits out, lips curled back into a snarl. “Answer me.”

Ricky glares at him. For a second he hates EJ because he has made leaving so much harder than it should be. 

“I…” Ricky, eyes wet with tears that threaten to fall, inhales shakily as he grabs a hold of his curls. He gives a look of defiance to EJ and releases his hair. “You’re leaving me. You are. Can you say that you’re not?”

“I’m not leaving you! I’m just moving across the country for fuck’s sakes—“

“And then what?! You meet someone new, you find them cooler, funnier, smart and ambitious, and you forget about me back here in shitty Salt Lake City—“

“Why are you so fucking hell bent that I will leave you?!”

“Because you will! Because everyone does!” Ricky screams in EJ’s face, and he watches as EJ’s face falls, wall crumbling away and anger melting away into... disgusting concern, the kind he got from everyone this year and never from EJ, which is what Ricky does not want at all. He starts to shake his head. “Don’t fucking look at me like that.”

EJ reaches out to him. A saving grace perhaps, a lifeline tossed to him to get him out of thrashing waters. “Ricky—"

“No! Don’t you dare! I don’t need this!” Ricky yells as he smacks EJ’s hand away. He roughly wipes his face with the back of hand, but the tears still keep falling. “You can’t just say everything is going to be okay when it won’t be! It never is!” A sob rips out of him, loud in the dead of night. He covers his mouth to stop anymore from coming out. “It never is.”

They’re both out of breath, already boiled over and all out of steam. EJ’s shoulders fall down into a slump, and the fire goes completely out. Ricky is the first to look away.

(Because although he may be stubborn, he is a coward first and foremost. So he does what he knows best.)

“I’m sorry. Just forget about me,” Ricky pleads as he hides his eyes away from EJ behind his arm, turning around to hide from the boy he loves.

He’s about to walk away from a real, honest to God, good chance at happiness, but if loving someone meant letting them go, then Ricky loves the shit out of EJ, to the fucking moon and back.

He’s walking, one, two, three steps away from EJ. And then he’s yanked on the arm, and three steps become zero, and Ricky becomes Ricky and EJ underneath the moonlight.

EJ says something into his hair, voice so soft like the wind through the leaves that Ricky isn’t even sure he heard it. But he did. And something within Ricky breaks.

He clings to EJ with fingers that dig into his skin, as if to leave dents that yes, Ricky at one point loved EJ with everything he had, clung to him as much as he could. With a breath, he closes his eyes and stands there once again wishing that summer never ended. That he and EJ would never end. If he could stop the world just to make this moment last forever, with the moon as their only witness, he could, but…

He forces himself away from EJ and gets into his car all without a word, doing all he could to avoid blue eyes that showed Ricky everything, but he doesn’t think he has the courage to look into them and see the damage that has been done.

He never gets the chance to see how defeated, how heartbroken EJ looks before the boy builds himself back up, brick by brick.

And so, Ricky drives away with the words he will never get to say or hear. He will keep them forever in his heart and let it destroy him, but that’s okay.

_“I could never forget you, Ricky.”_

Because EJ is gold.

* * *

“Think you could ever fall in love?”

Ricky stares at EJ and thinks yes, yes he could. And he did. He fell in love with a boy who had changed his life in so many ways, who came in like a storm and settled upon him like a golden hour. 

Taking a pull from the roll, he inhales, holds his breath, then leans over to breathe out into EJ’s open mouth and watches eyes flutter to a close. EJ does the same motions as him, inhales and holds his breath before finally letting the smoke billow up into the starry sky. A hand pulls Ricky closer before they finally meet in a kiss. 

When they break for air, Ricky whispers against EJ’s lips. 

  
  
  
  


“Nothing gold lasts forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @__ieatcereal


End file.
